D'Artagnan's journal

[DArtagnan]

Hi everyone! I'm D'Artagnan, living in Toulouse, a city in the south of France. I'm 37 years old. I was born in South America somewhere, and moved to Toulouse 15 years ago.

I have been very introverted all of my life, although not necessarily shy. My parents have very bad social skills, and very bad social mindsets. This and me being introverted set me up to not learn or absorb anything social - or sensual - from them, and actually learning a lot of bad habits and bad mindsets, and also not engaging fully in social life around me. Thus, my social progress in life has been very slow and filled with challenges.

I have discovered Girls Chase in 2014, reading the post about flirty girls. Thank you so much, Chase, and thanks also to the Girls Chase team: this discovery changed my life. That first post already helped me get past over a flirty girl I was obsessed with. And since then, I've been reading dozens of articles, and recently the HTMGC book, and this has completely changed my life. I've changed my behavior towards women, towards my parents, towards my family, professional colleagues, bosses, friends, and everytime this change has been for the better. It has been one realization after the other, and blowing my mind understanding the problems that were hitting me and seeing that I could actually handle them.

Biggest social and sexual problems I've had in my life:
* Being very introverted, reclusive, maybe even a bit autistic, for most of my life.
* Being mildly or medium depressed throughout most of my life. I consider that I overcame depression only five years ago, in 2019.
* Only bedding two girls in my entire life: the first one a girlfriend in a 3 year long-distance relationship, and the second one my ex-wife, with whom I lived a 4 year long-distance relationship, and then a 3 year living-together mariage. We divorced earlier this year. But Girls Chase definitely helped me building and making this relationship last for seven years.
* Between these two girls, I've had a total sexual breakdown consisting of 7 years with erection problems, obsessing over a few girls, and having other difficulties with girls.

Biggest wins in life, to end up on a high note:
* Playing keyboards in a very good rock n' roll band around my twenties. I was attracting some fair share of girls, although I was still a virgin and very bad at seduction, so I wasn't capitalizing on this. Still, I've managed to get a first girlfriend, with whom I broke before bedding her, and then a second girlfriend, mentioned above, mostly due to this rock period.
* Moving to France to study and work. I managed to come here thanks to my good grades back at my university in my home country. Here in France is where I started to really understand my potential as a man. I started to get more and more reactions from women, although I still couldn't bed any of them. Here is also where my erection problems started.

To conclude this introduction, here's where I am today: I've had a few positive experiences with girls in the past, hundreds of bad experiences, I have this shadow of the 7-year-erection-problems-period still menacing me, I have a lot to learn about social skills and seduction, but I'm somehow hopeful and confident in my potential, and what I want for the next few years is learn as much as possible and try to recover the lost time as much as possible. No strings or engagements, following my gut and my will, very probably no long-term relationships, definitely no mariages. "Here I go again on my own", and "it's a long way to the top, if you want to rock n' roll"

I will soon post a field report that I had recently, and which was a good kickstart to this new phase, although it didn't end as I wanted.

 

[DArtagnan]

Here's a end-of-the year recap of some actions I've done since the divorce earlier last year:

• Buying and starting reading HTMGC. This in parallel to reading a lot of articles from the GC blog. Creating an account here and start posting
• Chatting a bit with a lovely girl who bought some stuff I was selling online, using the platform chat. After a few exchanges, I ask for her real number, but she denies saying that she has a boyfriend. Still, she is charming and complies a bit in the msgs and in this last message, she even excuses herself for replying late - 9/10, first approach
• Became somehow a "very good friend" of a girl with boyfriend very quickly - 10/10, first number close, first "date" close
• Cold approach a girl after leaving a supermarket. We make eye contact once inside, I kind of wait for her outside, she comes in my direction, we make eye contact again. I approach her saying that she has beautiful eyes. I'm too clumsy and weak, and she responds badly, looks scared and surprised. I ask her one or two questions, she barely answers. I say goodbye and she leaves -> 8/10, first cold-approach
• Flirting with a local bakery's staff. She has given me some weird eye contact, charming and shy, in the past. She is very, very pretty. Although I know it's a bad idea to approach staff, I still went for it. I've got her name, and chatted a bit. However, I'm already feeling the oneitis coming, and decided that I will stop here. Strategy with her for the future: flirt a bit, but let her invest if she wants to -> 10/10, first "staff" approach
• Flirting with the pet-sitter. Still on, so no more details here.
• Installing Tinder and getting a first match. I already hate this app so much. I'm only giving another few days of chat with this first match, then try a pull, and then, independently of the results, uninstall the app. Tinder looks like a "chat app" more than a "meeting app". The girl is charming and there is some potential on it, though -> 8/10, first Tinder match, and probably the last for a while
• Approching women with a younger friend of mine in Paris, at night. We go out a few nights talking to women and approaching, in bars. We start drinking too much and too early, and when night comes, we are already tipsy. It doesn't go very well, although I get some interest and experiment with some new tricks: I try some teasing, some deep diving, talking to everybody in the venues, and some touching too. I'm particularly successfull with the latter: I grab some girls' hands, I kiss a girl's hands, I make a girl kiss me in the cheek, do some protective touching for girls when crossing the streets.

Voilà, that's it ! I'm happy with these tries and experiments. I've put some effort in, created some action, got some results, and didn't let any clear good opportunity pass by. There's still a lot of work to do, though. Plans for this new starting year:

• Improve some areas of my life where I desperately need some value, which will help cementing my 37 year old persona
• Continue approaching and getting hands-on experience, more in a cold, free-style, spontaneous style, and maybe with a more clear plan further in the year

 

[DArtagnan]

While writing the previous post, I just realized that I've missed some very big wins related to health and lifestyle that I've accomplished in recent years, and wanted to write it here to complement my first journal post:

• Physical activity. Since 2019, I've been gradually increasing physical activity. I've done swimming, sprinting, climbing, bodyweight exercises, weightlifting. I've gained roughly 6 pounds of muscle, and some hint of shoulders and abs, for the first time in my life. For the past year, I've stabilized into a 3-days-a-week exercise routine: weightlifting + climbing + uphill stairs sprinting.
• Diet. I've become a egg-flexitarian, which means I eat mostly plants and eggs daily, and occasionally some dairy and meat. I complement with plant-based organic protein. Most of what I eat is natural (unprocessed), organic, local and seasonal. This is also in tune with my values.
• Intermittent fasting. I've stopped eating breakfast, and started eating what I had for breakfast in my dinner, because oats and fruits is just so healthy. I have lunch around noon, a snack mid-afternoon, and dinner. This has profoundly changed me: it allowed me to lose weight and be able to control it naturally ever since.
• Fashion. Last year I've completely revamped my clothing style. I've bought more button-down shirts, a pair of leather shoes, some whool winter clothes including a vintage overcoat. Almost all of it in natural fibers. On the other hand, I've sold, donated or thrown-away many clothes that didn't serve me anymore or were offered to me by my mother or family in the past. No more "dressed by women" anymore
• Other lifestyle changes. I've started sleeping earlier and getting up earlier, doing grocery shopping in a zero-package local shop, decreased the heating temperature at home, and other similar improvements in lifestyle and in tune with my values.

 

[DArtagnan]

Lesson of the day. A few days ago, at the gym, I needed some dumbbells to do an exercise, went looking for them, and noticed that an old but charming lady, around 60 or 70, had just got up holding them. I thought she had finished and said warmly and playfully to her: "I'm taking these now". She hesitated for a few seconds, then said "I'm still going to use them for a last set". I said "Oh I see", then waited around, thinking that I must have sounded harsh or rude for wanting to take the dumbbells without asking for them first. When she finished, she came to me all happy and lightly flirted with me, "Here they are, they are all warm and ready to be used". Mental facepalm for me: of course, she liked my assertiveness! Don't ask questions, don't say please, don't say sorry, I guess